CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Faith checked her phone. Her heart leaped when she saw the update from Michael. I think I found the right place. Checking it out this morning. Will reach out once I’ve confirmed.
She texted back. Any sign of David yet?
She held her breath until Michael replied. When he replied, she sighed with disappointment. Not yet. They’re probably staying in their car. Hotels leave paper trails, and they’re doing their best to avoid that.
Faith thought of suggesting that he use local law enforcement to help him find David, then thought better of it. That would also leave a paper trail.
Instead, she texted back a thumbs up and a thank-you. He knew where they were heading, at least, or probably knew.
She sighed and dropped her head into her hands. Damn it, she hated not being there. She hated not knowing in real time exactly what was happening with David: if he was alive, if he had succeeded, if he was captured (for real this time), or injured somewhere. If he were dead.
Torn apart.
She took a long sip from her third cup of coffee and sighed as the rich taste of the brew filled her mouth. She let the liquid warm her, soothing her fears, relaxing the tension in her shoulders.
And that’s how she knew she was up too long. When cheap motel coffee started tasting like a fresh presspot of Arabian peaberry, your mind was beginning to wander.
Faith’s mind couldn’t have wandered too far, though. She’d found another suspect. Her all-nighter—the most recent of countless throughout her career—had paid off.
“Faith? Did you sleep at all?”
“Sleep is for the weak,” Faith replied.
Jessica gave her a groggy middle finger as she trudged to the coffeemaker and poured herself a cup. Faith faked a pout and said, “That’s not nice. After I found us another suspect and everything.”
“I want to hear about the suspect,” Jessica said. “I also want you to look at yourself in the mirror.”
Faith obliged and saw her lips pushed out in an exaggerated cutesy pout. Underneath her bloodshot eyes and lined forehead the effect was… well, a good reminder that she wasn’t a teenager and all-nighters actually affected her.
She cleared her throat and said, “Okay, good point. I’ll make sure to sleep tonight. In the meantime, I found someone else with a connection to the victims.”
“Name?”
“Sahar Mitchell. Formerly Dr. Sahar Mithcell.”
Jessica raised an eyebrow. "Should I assume that the former part has something to do with her problem with our victims?"
“It’s a safe assumption,” Faith said. “Dr. Mitchell—back when she was a doctor—was exposed by none other than Margaret Hayes for selling fake therapy dog licenses for profit.”
Jessica blinked. “Really?”
“Really. It took a while to verify this, but I eventually managed to get access to the court records of the case. Miss Hayes reported Dr. Mitchell for the practice after allegedly researching how to certify a dog as a therapy dog and discovering erroneously that it was as simple as saying you wanted your dog certified and receiving the diploma.”
“And the courts fell for that? I mean, it’s obviously the pot calling the kettle black.”
“More likely than not, the courts had a bigger problem with Dr. Mitchell selling fake licenses than they did with Hayes obtaining one.”
“Hmm. Any idea why Hayes chose to be a hypocrite?”
“No. That’s something we’ll want to follow up on with Dr. Mitchell.”
“Okay. So, what’s the Thomas Webb connection?”
“Well, it looks like Dr. Mitchell named him as an accomplice during interrogation. He denied it, and the case against him was dropped due to lack of evidence.”
“Meanwhile Dr. Mitchell lost her veterinary license.”
“Yep.”
“I can see why she might hold a grudge for that.”
“Exactly. The best part is that Dr. Mitchell recently moved to Newton. About six weeks ago, to be exact.”
Jessica nodded. “That sure doesn’t sound like a coincidence.”
“It could be,” Faith allowed, “but it’s suspicious as hell.”
“Sure is.” Jessica finished the rest of her coffee in two big gulps. She sighed with satisfaction. “Okay. Let’s go talk to her.” She looked Faith up and down. “I’m driving.”
“Fine with me,” Faith said.
***
The former Dr. Sahar Mitchell lived in a condo in Chestnut Hill, a neighborhood of Newton, Massachusetts, near Boston College.
The majority of the residents—at least the ones Faith could see—were college kids.
Most of them rode bicycles, and several of them cast dirty looks at the rental SUV as Jessica parked the car in front of Mitchell’s unit.
“Think it’s the car or the fact that we’re law enforcement?” Jessica asked drily.
“Probably both,” Faith said. “College students still have the luxury of believing the world could be a utopia if only these old fuddy-duddies would just get out of the way. By the time they reach twenty-five, they’ll have acquainted themselves with the fact that life is hard work and utopia is a fever dream concocted by old, tired people with too much time on their hands. ”
Jessica looked at her. “You need more coffee.”
“You started it.”
Turk barked, probably to pull his humans’ heads back into the game.
They approached the door to Mitchell’s first-floor unit, and Faith heard yapping from behind a low plastic fence.
She looked down to see a tiny teacup Yorkshire Terrier, no bigger than a guinea pig, barking at them.
Each bark lifted all four paws off the ground, and the effort caused the dog’s hair to stand on end.
Turk looked at the tiny creature incredulously. He looked back at Faith as though to ask, what is that?
“Minnie!” a voice called. “Calm down! It’s just a delivery!”
“Actually, it’s the FBI,” Faith called, “and if you’re Sahar Mitchell, we need to talk to you!”
The door opened, and a slim, athletic woman of around forty poked her head through. She stared at the agents for a moment, then said, “What?”
“We need to talk to you,” Faith repeated. “Can we come inside?”
Mitchell started to say no, then glanced behind Faith at her neighbor’s door. She pressed her lips together and offered a curt, “Fine. Is your dog really a K9, or did you just buy him a pretty vest?”
“He’s a trained K9 unit,” Faith replied, “with experience as a military working dog prior to his service with the FBI.”
“Anyone can say that.”
“If you’d like, I’ll give you my boss’s phone number,” Faith said. “He’ll verify that I’m the Chief Instructor of the FBI’s K9 School and therefore have at least a basic understanding of what I’m talking about.”
Mitchell’s lips thinned. She looked warily at Turk, who returned a steady gaze of his own. “All right,” she said reluctantly. “Minnie, come here.”
The little dog bounced onto her hands, and Mitchell pulled him protectively to her chest. She gave Faith a dark look and led the three agents inside.
The interior of the condo was pleasant: clean with decent furniture and a forty-inch tv rather than the usual theater screens Faith saw.
It was light on decoration, however, and the appliances were old budget models.
The refrigerator creaked and buzzed, suggesting it was on its last legs, and the burners of the gas stove were heavily rusted.
Dr. Mitchell had fallen on hard times since losing her veterinary license.
“Okay,” Mitchell said, sitting in an easy chair and still clutching Minnie to her chest. “Tell me what this is about.”
“The murders of Margaret Hayes and Thomas Webb.”
“You’re shitting me.”
“I very much am not,” Faith said.
She and Jessica remained standing. Turk trotted around the apartment, claws rapping lightly on the linoleum, nose to the ground as he searched for clues.
“He’s not going to track mud onto the carpet in my bedroom, is he?” Mitchell asked.
“Do you have any ponchos in there?” Faith asked.
“What?”
“Anything that might connect you to our crime scenes?”
Mitchell blinked and looked between the three agents. “I don’t understand what this is about. Are you really asking me if I killed those two?”
“Yes.”
“Well, no.” She laughed. “That’s ridiculous.”
Remembering the time wasted at Amanda Prowse’s house, Faith asked, “Can you verify your whereabouts for yesterday morning and the night before?”
Mitchell blinked. “I was here.”
“Can anyone verify that?”
She scoffed. “I mean… I’m innocent until proven guilty, right?”
“So, no.”
She swallowed. “I don’t… Do I need a lawyer?”
Faith didn’t want to deal with lawyers if she could avoid it, so she backed off a little. “Why don’t you tell me about your interactions with the two victims. You and Thomas Webb were in business together at one point, correct?”
Mitchell shifted in her chair. Minnie tried to jump out of her hands, and she caught the dog and brought her back to her chest. “Thomas… would sell me equipment.”
“Can you be more specific?”
Mitchell clearly didn’t want to be, but Faith’s expression left no wiggle room. She sighed. “He would provide vests for the therapy dogs I would certify.”
“The ones you illegally certified, correct?” Jessica asked.
Mitchell’s lips thinned. “I know where you’re going with this, but I didn’t kill him. I was angry. I said some things I shouldn’t have, but I never intended to follow through on them. I just wanted to scare him.”
Faith controlled her surprise. She hadn’t come across any threatening statements on Mitchell’s part. This was news to her.
Jessica tried to pry more information from the suspect. “You can understand how what you said might make us feel differently, right? People who use those words often follow through.”
“I know,” Mitchell said, lifting a trembling hand to wipe sweat from her brow.
Minnie hopped out of her other hand, tumbled to the floor and trotted right up to Turk. Turk stood stock still, eyes wide, probably terrified that any accidental contact would crush the little dog. Faith wasn’t so sure he was wrong to be afraid of that.
Mitchell watched the two of them closely, and once she was satisfied that Turk wasn’t going to eat Minnie, she replied, “I never would have actually killed him. I was just angry.”
“But you did threaten to kill him, right?”
Mitchell swallowed. “This was two years ago. I was angry because I lost my veterinary license. That was my source of income. I didn’t always live in a condo with secondhand appliances, you know.”
“No,” Faith agreed. “In fact, you only moved here a few weeks ago, is that correct?”
“You do a lot of home improvement?” Jessica asked. She was standing in the kitchen, having moved there while Mitchell answered Faith’s questions.
Mitchell blinked. “What?”
Jessica lifted a plastic clamshell case containing a dozen boxcutter blades. The steel gleamed dully under the light of the floor lamp in Mitchell’s living room.
Faith looked up at Mitchell. Mitchell returned a confused look, but Faith had caught the flash of fear before that confusion. Faith imagined Mitchell, teeth bared in a feral smile, snarling as she used those blades to slice her victims to ribbons.
She stared coldly at their suspect. The boxcutters sat in between them, still winking in the light, like they were leering at her. Want to know what your insides look like? Let’s see you bleed, little girl.
Mitchell looked between the agents, her face paling as she realized how much danger she was now in. “What?” she asked, trying for bravado and landing on anxiety.
“You tell me,” Faith said, never taking her eyes off of Mitchell.
Mitchell scoffed, still trying to look above-it-all and still failing. “I have them for art projects.”
“And you need this many?”
“They come in packs of twelve for ten dollars on . Why… What do boxcutters have to do with anything? Do you think I killed Thomas Webb and Margaret Hayes with a boxcutter?”
“Did you?”
“No! For God’s…” She sighed and clasped her hands on her lap, gripping hard enough that the knuckles turned white.
“No. I sent Thomas an email saying I’d kill him because I was mad that he didn’t admit to his part in our business.
It was his idea for me to put my name on the certifications.
He told me it would legitimize the business.
I was trying to help people. People who really needed therapy animals but couldn’t get one because insurance companies are assholes.
I wasn’t trying to help lazy bitches like Hayes who wanted one just so she didn’t have to listen to signs that said no pets allowed. ”
“Strong language,” Faith pointed out.
“Do you kill everyone you swear at?”
“No, but I’ve never threatened to kill anyone either,” Faith said. “Not unless they were about to kill me or a loved one.”
Mitchell took a deep breath and pushed it out through her nose.
“I was angry with Thomas and Hayes. I had a good thing going, and they ruined it. I was helping people, and Hayes got pissy that I wasn’t helping her.
Thomas tucked his tail in between his legs and let me take the fall for everything.
It sucked. But frankly, I’m not confident I’d get away with murder. ”
“That’s the only reason? You’re just afraid you couldn’t get away with it?”
Mitchell smiled tightly. “Would you like me to preach about how immoral it is?” Before Faith could reply, she got to her feet and gestured for the door. “Unless I’m under arrest, you’re no longer welcome here. If you want to talk to me again, you can go through my lawyer.”
Faith lifted her hands. “All right. In the meantime, you shouldn’t leave town.”
“I’ll do whatever I damned well please.”
Faith held her gaze. “Do you plan on testing that assumption anytime soon?”
Mitchell swallowed and lowered her eyes. “I’ll stay in town. But I’m not the person you’re looking for. If you want them caught before someone else gets killed, then you need to keep looking.”
“We’ll keep looking,” Faith said. “In the meantime, start thinking about how you can prove you were here when Margaret Hayes was murdered.”
The three agents left the house. Minnie yipped a bright farewell to Turk, who still seemed uneasy with the tiny dog’s size.
Faith was uneasy as well, but Minnie had nothing to do with it. For all of her sternness with Mitchell, she was beginning to doubt she was the killer. The boxcutters were suspicious, but they and her weak alibi and recent move were all circumstantial.
And what if she was right? What if they were chasing fireflies while the snake slithered unseen through the grass?